


The Moments I Play In The Dark

by Parker_Haven_Wuornos



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Audrey Parker (Mentioned) - Freeform, Canon Backstory, Extended Metaphors, Inspired by a Lorde Song, M/M, One Shot, Prompt Fic, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:33:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23301706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parker_Haven_Wuornos/pseuds/Parker_Haven_Wuornos
Summary: Parts of the story of him and Duke would always be for moments like this, when he was alone in his dark house, nursing a drink and indulging in his own memory. When he thought about them, it was as one of the grainy, old-school film movies he’d been so fond of when they were kids.
Relationships: Duke Crocker/Nathan Wuornos
Comments: 11
Kudos: 20





	The Moments I Play In The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Is this the same as Small Town Gays? I don't know, but if you like this, you should check that out. Title and fic inspiration is from Supercut by Lorde and from a prompt sent to me by the wonderful Ashe Gendernoncompliant. My dear, this is your fault.

He didn’t tell Parker the whole story when she asked. He told her that he didn’t like Duke, and that much was true, but he left out the why of it, because he’d only just met her, and he didn’t owe her that. He liked her. Not telling her the whole sordid story didn’t mean otherwise. She was sticking around to hunt down more information about her mother, and he figured someday he might tell her more, but he knew there would always be parts that he kept for himself. 

Parts of the story of him and Duke would always be for moments like this, when he was alone in his dark house, nursing a drink and indulging in his own memory. 

There are two versions of the story, and infinitely more. For each moment of that day—one of the worst of his life—there were choices that were made. Sometimes, on nights like this, he let himself think about what might have happened if he’d made different choices, if Duke had. 

Where would they be? He let himself ask that question only rarely, because really, what good did it do? But after seeing what Marion Caldwell could do, and knowing what that might mean, Nathan thought he had earned some indulgence, so he poured himself another drink, sat in the worn, hand me down chair in the living room, and let himself remember. 

When he thought about him and Duke, it was as one of the grainy, old-school film movies he’d been so fond of when they were kids.

Scenes of their childhood flashed past like blinks—Nathan didn’t like to think about the day they’d gone sledding—and the film settled on a shot of him and Duke the summer Nathan had gotten his truck. They’d both been so proud, and for that summer it had been theirs. Duke had claimed it almost instantly, a sticker Nathan still couldn’t scrape off plastered on the dash.

“It’s my seat,” Duke said. “It has my flag on it.”

Scenes from that summer would flash by in a montage, mostly it was just him and Duke driving too fast next to the coat, the windows down and the music up too loud, arms tossed out either window, Duke’s extended, resisting the breeze and Nathan’s crooked around the frame.

He no longer remembered what the weather had been like, or what the sun and breeze felt like on his skin, but in the movie in his mind, the sky was as blue as his car and everything had been bright and perfect.

The montage slowed to focus on a moment that would always make Nathan ache. The truck parked out by the cliffs, overlooking the ocean, and his hands in Duke’s hair. Duke’s lips on his throat, teeth scraping skin. Maybe there was an x-rated cut somewhere, but Nathan kept that locked up tighter than the rest of his memories, not hiding the sex, which Nathan wasn’t ashamed of, but hiding how desperate Nathan had been, how he had reached for Duke. How he had held like he wasn’t going to let go.

Those scenes scratched out, transitioning roughly into Nathan coming home from college to see the wreck of a boat Duke had won in a poker match. He had been proud too, had wondered where his sticker should go, up until the moment Duke had said, “I’m leaving.”

This was one of the moments when things could have changed. Nathan could have yelled, could have begged, could have even just asked.

“Stay, Duke. Please.”

But he didn’t. It wouldn’t have been fair; when Nathan had left for school, Duke had let him.

He had asked, late that night, wrapped around Duke on sheets that smelled like mold while the rusty boat rocked them gently. “What about us?”

Duke had shrugged. “I don’t know.”

He had told Parker that Duke was unreliable, and maybe that was what he’d meant. That Duke was all in for everything until he wasn’t, and Nathan could never tell when the switch had been flipped.

Nathan wanted to fast-forward his film past that night. It hadn’t been the end, but really it had been. The next part of the film was a montage of awkward encounters and phone calls that never came on any kind of schedule. Nathan never knew what time zone Duke was in, and most of the time he didn’t think Duke knew either. They were further apart than just the distance, and Nathan didn’t know how to cross it.

And then he went home. He joined HPD, made friends, had a life, and Duke stopped calling altogether.

And Nathan didn’t blame him.

“I remember you used to hang around Duke Crocker,” Laverne said one night when they were both on the graveyard shift, playing cards to pass the time. “Always worried he’d get you in trouble.”

Nathan didn’t defend him, even though most of the trouble they’d gotten in together had been Nathan’s fault, and the trouble Duke got into on his own was unavoidable.

His film faded to black on that moment,

Nathan stared into his half empty glass, wondering if he would need more just to get through the rest of the memories. There were more deviations from script from this point forward, more moments where he might have changed their course, rewritten something so that it didn’t go where they had.

He took a sip and let the movie play a shot of the sun rising over Haven, an early morning at the docks and a new, familiar, ancient, floating pile of trash anchored there.

The Rouge and her captain were back in Haven.

What would have been said, Nathan wondered, if he had driven right to Duke’s slip that morning and told him that he was ecstatic to see him? He was. His film showed him that, as clear as his memory. He doubted anything he’d seen in Haven in years had made him as happy as the sight of the Rouge had that morning.

In his mind now, he let the film follow his truck to the docks, where Duke was waiting looking older and more tired, but exactly the same. He wasn’t sure what he would have said. Anything probably would have been fine, just something to let Duke know that things could come back to what they had been.

But the real version hadn’t gone like that. Nathan had gone to work, wondering if maybe Duke would be the one to make that first move. He was the brave one, the adventurer, the one who’d left. It should have been up to him to come back first.

But Duke didn’t come see him. There was no reason for him not to. Nathan knew he was easy to find, and maybe that week he made it a little easier, spending more time hanging around town where he might be seen.

Duke didn’t find him, and at the end of the week, the chief got a call that he briefed the whole station on.

“Some of us might be aware that Duke Crocker is back in town. Seems in the years he’s been gone he graduated from petty crime to more serious robbery and smuggling. Keep your eyes and ears open, the feds don’t know what he’s doing here but it’s sure to be something.” He fixed his eyes on Nathan. “Don’t trust him.”

Nathan hadn’t paid attention to anything his father had said in nearly a decade, so he didn’t let it get to him. Whatever had happened in the intervening years, Duke was still Duke. Once he called, Nathan could clear this up. He was so sure, then, that Duke had come back to see him—because what else was there in Haven for Duke?—that he hadn’t even considered that there was some merit to his father’s words.

And then Duke had invited him to go fishing.

Nathan stood up. He didn’t want to play through this again, but this was the climax of the film; this was the moment the genre was decided.

All the clues had been there, but he had ignored them because it was Duke, his Duke. Had he seen them, had he even looked, he would have realized what was going on, that he was getting played.

He could have said something, the same thing he’d wanted to say years ago before Duke left. “Don’t, Duke. It won’t end well. Don’t do it.”

He hadn’t said that, though. He had said he’d go with him, and he’d found himself on a boat loaded with contraband Nathan couldn’t be caught with, because he’d lose his job. If he lost his job, he’d lose the last vestiges of his relationship with his father.

Duke should have known that. _His_ Duke would have thought about that. Part of Nathan believed that Duke had thought of that, but this new, changed Duke simply hadn’t cared.

In a script where their story was a romance, Nathan would have been heartbroken, sad rather than angry. He would have begged for an explanation, which Duke would have tearfully given, along with an apology, a reason that absolved him.

But looking back, Nathan knew the story of him and Duke was not a romance, probably never had been, and back then, he had not wanted explanation, apology, or absolution. He had wanted a fight.

The fight was fragments of film. The camera of his memory had not survived it any more than Nathan felt like he had survived it. He pictured the film lying on the deck of Duke’s boat, ruined by seawater and sunlight.

What footage survived, Nathan hated to think about. He saw himself now, a broken projection on the wall of his home, as the villain of the fight. He didn’t know if this was accuracy or a trick of framing and editing, but he was the aggressor. The first fist to fly had been his. Duke defended himself.

Duke always defended himself, but Nathan didn’t know what his defenses had been, and they had been useless anyway.

Was there a different cut? Nathan wondered. Was there one where he had listened to Duke? Where they hadn’t fought?

It didn’t matter, the next scene followed too close on the heels of the last, a close edit as if they hadn’t had a frame to spare, not a second to let the audience breathe.

Days later, Eleanor had asked about Duke. “Have you talked to him since he’s gotten back? He and Julia used to be friends and I thought I might go say hello.”

“He changed,” Nathan had said. “He’s selfish now, only looks out for himself.”

Eleanor had sighed, muttered something about how sometimes that happened, how sad it was that, that he’d been a nice boy in a difficult situation.

There was no version of the script where he took that back, not even when it got around town, when people avoided Duke or repeated what Nathan had said.

All of that, he thought he could tell Audrey someday, if it was necessary. He could tell her that as kids they’d been close, if often adversarial. He could tell her, maybe, that he had loved Duke, that they’d been a special kind of crazy for each other. He could tell her that Duke had come back changed. He could even tell her about the smuggling and the fight and where it had led them. He could tell her that his words had spread like wildfire, because everything did in Haven.

The detail he wouldn’t tell Audrey, the detail he would never repeat, was the fact that, the night after the fight, his phone rang. He remembered looking at it, remembered the way the glow of the screen reflected on the dark glass of his kitchen window.

He had known Duke his whole life. He knew that this call would not come twice. Duke would let it ring until he got to voicemail, but he wouldn’t leave one. This was their second chance, because Duke always offered those, but he didn’t offer third chances; that wasn’t part of the deal. If Nathan didn’t answer, Duke’s name would never light up Nathan’s caller ID again.

This was where Nathan’s cut ended. It ended on the shot of the phone ringing, and himself staring at it, hand hovering inches away.

It was dramatic, poetic, even, to end it there, unsure.

A true romance would have had him pick up the phone and say any of the hundreds of words he’d held back through the years.

“I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you.”

“Please forgive me.”

“Why did you do it?”

“I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Stay with me.”

But Nathan and Duke had never been a romance. They were a bad decision.

He didn’t answer the phone. He didn’t offer or ask for forgiveness. This new, dark thing that had grown up between him and Duke was etched into stone.

But even now, in his dark kitchen as he left the glass in the sink, despite what he’d said to Duke only hours ago, Nathan looked at his phone and wondered. He watched it for another minute, waiting for it to ring.  
There’s a version of the script where it does.


End file.
